LOVE her or loathe her, you can’t have missed a moment of Jade Goody’s high-profile life and death – unless you have been living on planet Mars for the past few months.
Hers was the ultimate reality TV tale, but it ended in the sad news last week that the 27- year-old had lost her very public battle with cervical cancer.
During the years before cancer blighted her life, she struck some as refreshing and honest, others as ignorant and shallow.
Jade first divided audiences in 2002 when she left a job as a dental nurse to appear on Big Brother. She became the first BB millionaire and snagged book, perfume and workout DVD deals despite not knowing where East Anglia was and thinking Rio de Janeiro was a person.
She made her public mistakes, the awful racist remark to Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty being the worst.
Many also questioned Jade’s decision to allow the media access to every moment of her cancer battle, which she did in order to fund the education of her two young sons.
But in my eyes, you can’t blame a mother for wanting to give her children the privileged upbringing she was denied.
While she may have been milking the media for as much money as she possibly could, Jade’s decision to give us an access-all-areas invitation into her final days also did much to raise awareness about cervical cancer and the importance of smear tests.
That will be her legacy.
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